ge, and in its rear; the
_piqueur_ scouring along the road in advance, like a rocket. By the way,
a lady of the court told me lately that Louis XVIII. had lost some of
his French by the emigration, for he did not know how to pronounce this
word _piqueur_.

On witnessing all this magnificence, the mind is carried back a few
generations, in the inquiry after the progress of luxury, and the usages
of our fathers. Coaches were first used in England in the reign of
Elizabeth. It is clear enough, by the pictures in the Louvre, that in
the time of Louis XIV. the royal carriages were huge, clumsy vehicles,
with at least three seats. Mademoiselle de Montpensier, in her Memoirs,
tells us how often she took her place at the window, in order to admire
the graceful attitudes of M. de Lauzun, who rode near it. There is still
in existence, in the Bibliotheque du Roi, a letter of Henry IV. to
Sully, in which the king explains to the grand master the reason why he
could not come to the arsenal that day; the excuse being that the queen
_was using the carriage!_ To-day his descendant seldom moves at a pace
slower than ten miles the hour, is drawn by eight horses, and is usually
accompanied by one or more empty vehicles of equal magnificence to
receive him, in the event of an accident.

Notwithstanding all this regal splendour, the turn-outs of Paris, as a
whole, are by no means remarkable. The genteelest and the fashionable
carriage is the chariot. I like the proportions of the French carriages
better than those of the English or our own, the first being too heavy,
and the last too light. The French vehicles appear to me to be in this
respect a happy medium. But the finish is by no means equal to that of
the English carriages, nor at all better than that of ours. There are
relatively a large proportion of shabby-genteel equipages at Paris. Even
the vehicles that are seen standing in the court of the Tuileries on a
reception day are not at all superior to the better sort of American
carriages, though the liveries are much more showy.

Few people here own the carriages and horses they use. Even the
strangers, who are obliged to have travelling vehicles rarely use them
in town, the road and the streets requiring very different sorts of
equipages. There are certain job-dealers who furnish all that is
required for a stipulated sum. You select the carriage and horses on
trial and contract at so much a month, or at so much a year. The
coachma